Twice a year an estimated 16,000 people attend the Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot and military gun show in Kentucky. It is the largest gathering of civilian owned machine guns in the world with over 700 tables containing machine guns, military surplus, ammo, hard to find parts and pieces and regular firearms and supplies.

Firearms sales have surged since Obama’s election as millions of Americans have gone on a buying spree that has stripped gun shops in some parts of the country almost bare of assault weapons and led to a national ammunition shortage.

The FBI says that since November 2008 more than seven million people applied for criminal background checks in order to buy weapons, a figure excluding the many more buying at thousands of gun shows in states such as Virginia, without facing any checks.

Gun-shop owners and the National Rifle Association say the surge is driven by worries that Obama is planning to ban many types of firearms and that the deepening economic crisis will fuel a crime wave.

Gun control groups, pressing for greater control on firearms, accuse the NRA of funding a massive scare campaign to portray Obama as a gun owner’s worst nightmare and to argue that tighter restrictions on weapons ownership are a threat to broader liberties and a step toward tyranny.